Carl Sandburg

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Carl Sandburg. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-087544. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878July 22, 1967) was an American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer, and folklorist. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois of Swedish parents and died at his home, named Connemara, in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

H. L. Mencken once called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat." He was a successful journalist, poet, historian, biographer, and autobiographer. During the course of his career, Sandburg won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years) and one for his collection The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. Yet today, his poetry is nearly forgotten, having been dropped from most of the major anthologies of American Literature.